11.

6 Japanese Swords

11.6.1 The Myth and the History of the Japanese Sword

The Myth
I started this enterprise because I wanted to know more about a few things concerning iron, steel and swords. I'm a
materials scientist after all, and I should know a bit more than just the essentials about iron and steel, even so my
speciality are semiconductors. Somehow the project went out of control. By now I have written around 370 modules, far
more than anticipated. Now I'm about to write the last modules about sword making. I'm now getting to the ultra-famous
Japanese Sword! The climax is near!
You know what? I'm bored. The making of a Japanese sword just doesn't contain much new stuff. Pretty much
everything of metallurgical interest connected to the making of Japanese swords has been covered before.
Note that I'm not saying that a Japanese sword isn't a supreme weapon or a major piece of art. I also have no problem
asserting that it counts among the best swords a smith can make with bloomery-made iron and steel.
I do state, however, that the same can be said for a well-made Iranian wootz shamshir with a kirk nardaban pattern, a
Roman pattern welded sword, a Frankish all-steel sword and many other swords. In other words: when considering
Japanese swords, art appreciation is often more important than metallurgy.
So what is so special about Japanese swords or katanas? I'll give you a whole list below but the first point is simple:
they are still around in prime conditions! The same goes for (wootz-bladed) shamshirs, tulwars, and so on.
In contrast we do not have a single old pattern welded sword that still looks like new. All you see in most cases is a
piece of heavily corroded steel and that makes it difficult to admire that thing as a masterly piece of the smiths art.
One needs to bear in mind that a typical pattern welded sword is about 800 - 400 years older than the typical
nihontos or shamshirs from 1200 or later.

The swords that cut it all?

Large picture

Source: The Beauty of the Japanese Sword, History and Traditional Technology. Michihiro Tanobe;
The Japanese Sword Museum. From the Macao Museum of Art page.

Looks do count, as the fashion industry knows. Good looking models routinely do make more money than
knowledgable and useful engineers. The Tizona of El Cid is probably just as good in a fight as Japanese swords
from about 1050 AD or later but she is just not as showy. The Tizona neither is highly polished nor does she sport a
"hamon". We don't know if she has the hardened martensitic edge necessary for a hamon but it is quite likely for
swords of her age and prominence.
A Japanese sword just looks great. Some sports cars are described that "even standing still they seem to break the
speed limit" and a Japanese sword gives you a similar impression as to what it can do. In its highly polished glittering
splendor it already looks much sharper than your regular dull-bladed straight sword. Japanese swords just look good,

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even the old ones. That is the first point for understanding how a whole mythology could develop around the Japanese
sword. It does look like a deadly awe-inspiring weapon and, being perfectly preserved and polished, it looks just great.
What else is there? Quite a bit. I only give you a few of the salient points; the Net is full of details. Note that much of
what follows also applies to wootz swords; I mentioned this already. Here is my list of all the particulars that work
together for producing the myth of the Japanese sword:

1. It's perfectly preserved and still looks great after 800 yeas or so. See above.
2. The Japanese themselves created a huge cult about their swords and what the possession of a sword meant for
its bearer. Look up the "code of the Samurai" etc. The Germanic tribes in the (early) first millennium might have
had a big sword cult too, but neither did they write anything down nor do we have well-preserved swords. No
competition there.
3. The Japanese sword often comes with a certificate of what it could do. It's chiseled in the tang. And we talk about
the results of experiments here, like how many heads could be severed in one blow. If you own such a Japanese
blade you actually know that it severed a few heads; maybe many. That makes for this special feeling you just
don't get with other swords.
4. The Japanese swords come with a large number of great sounding Japanese names for an unbelievably large
number of very important details. Learning all this stuff puts you into an exclusive group with grandmasters and
all, and that feels good.
"A long HOSO-SUGUHA that becomes gently ASAKI-NOTARE KO-MIDARE BA in deep NIOI-FUKAi and KO-
NIE. There is ASHI and YO, and KINSUJI strikes through figures becoming slightly SUNAGASHI", says a recent
advertisement for a sword you can buy. Can't beat that. Here is the first step for getting you pointed in that
direction.
5. The manufacturing process did not change much in more than 1000 years. Bloomery steel was and is used.
Since there is a general myth that ancient techniques are somehow better than modern ones, this adds to the
myth about the Japanese sword.
6. The Japanese sword is known to be unbelievably sharp. Far sharper than anything else, because it was polished
and finished by experts drawing on hundreds if not thousands of years of experience and of course with special
and ancient secret ingredients. This is mostly plain old BS but just too good to be disbelieved.
7. A good Japanese sword effortlessly cuts through about anything without suffering damage, especially through all
the non-Japanese and thus inferior swords. This is completely plain old BS. Since owners of valuable Japanese
swords never try to cut a stone with it, for example, the myth lives on.

17th century Japanese sword for sale (about 36.000 )

Large picture with text

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 Source: Japanese Sword Shop Aoi-Art, March 2015

Enough. There are plenty of books and innumerable Internet sites dealing with the Japanese sword. And there are
people in Japan right now who smelt iron and steel the old-fashioned way, and smiths who forge sword blades just as
their ancient forebears. That is a wonderful thing, to be sure. It is not an unique thing, however. Patrick Barta from the
Czech republic does all of that for pattern welded swords, and several Americans (and others), foremost Al Pendray,
successfully try their hands on making and forging wootz steel.

A few Remarks About the History of the Japanese Sword

The Japanese have (of course) an elaborate system for classifying their swords according to history. Here is the general
outline:

1. Jokoto Ancient swords, until around 900 A.D

2. Koto Old swords from around 9001596
3. Shinto New swords, 15961780
4. Shinshinto New new swords, 17811876
5. Gendaito Modern swords, 18761945
6. Shinsakuto Newly made swords, 1953present
Due to a bit of unpleasantness related to loosing a war there is a hole in the history from 1945 - 1953. It probably could
be termed "stealing of Japanese swords by Americans". Some claim that after the war there were more Japanese
swords in the United States than in Japan.
Looking a the Jokoto swords one finds, first of all, not all that much and second, straight double-edged "spatha" type
blades. Here is one known as "ken" (or "tsurugi") type:

A "ken" type 5th century Japanese blade

Source: Metropolitan Museum,, NYC 1)

The next picture, often encountered in the Net but with no clear description, shows mostly Japanese swords but
also one or two Chinese swords from the 6th century. Note that they are single-edged; technically they are
backswords

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 Japanese / Chinese 6th century swords
Large picture

Source: Metropolitan Museum, NYC 2)

There is no clear descriptions because the Metropolitan is a bit vague about these treasures 2). There also seems
to be little known about the metallurgy of these swords (couldn't find anything in a short search) but they are likely
less sophisticated than their 6th century pattern welded counterparts in Europe.
These swords embody the Jokoto (or chokuto) swords mentioned above. Their blades might consist of (faggoted?)
quench-hardened steel since this technique (known to the Celts and Romans) was first used in the 6th century in
Japan.
Generally speaking, the early Japanese sword, or the technology for making it, supposedly came from China and /
or Korea. I'm not debating that but considering that China's steel products were made from cast iron and not from
bloomery iron / steel, it is not clear to me why Japanese swords were made from bloomery steel only up to this very
day.
Next we have the koto sword (9001596). If you look at the picture above or the full scale rendering, you see a number
of koto swords. They look more or less like the rest, and they have about everything that metallurgically defines a
Japanese sword.
No. Don't send me now hate mail or worse. I know of course that there are huge differences between koto, shinto,
shinshinto, and so on - if you only look at Japanese swords. But if you look at all swords, all of the above qualifies just
as "Japanese swords". And that's why I will only give a few highlights with regard to these blades.

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Koto. Old swords from around 9001596
The typical sword of that period is the tachi. It is somewhat longer but otherwise quite similar to the later katana.
many katanas, in fact, were made by shortening an olde tachi. A tachi was always worn suspended from cords on a
belt with the blade facing downwards. Early models had uneven curves (i.e. not given by parts of just one circle or
one "radius of curvature") with the deepest part of the curve at the hilt. It was in essence a cavalry sword.
The making of koto swords marks the climax of Japanese sword forging. Masamune (c.12641343), widely
recognized as Japan's greatest swordsmith, made kotos around 1288 - 1328. Here is the so called "Ikeda
Masamune". It was a tachi but later shortened to be a Katana.

Masamune sword

Source: Swordforum 2006

Shinto. New swords, 15961780

These are considered inferior to most koto. Manufacturing complexity was lower in this period. Katanas appear and
they are now worn stuck through a sash or belt and paired with a smaller blade, the wakizashi. The blade faces
upwards in both cases.
The quenching technique had been fine-tuned to produce intriguing if ridiculous results, in particular in the Edo era
(1684 -1763). As the Japanese source states in somewhat ungrammatical but rather clear English: "This means
that Samurai corrupted".

Edo katana blades with flower power hamon design.

Source: Japanese Sword School Internet site around 2000; now under http://www.nihonto.ro/

Shinshinto. Literally "new new swords" 17811876.

Going back to the koto style; "shinshinto" can also be interpreted as "new revival swords". Shinshintos are
considered superior to most shinto, but still inferior to koto.
Gendaito. Modern swords, 18761945.
Shinsakuto. Newly made swords, 1953present
Forget them. The one remarkable thing about shinto and later is that all these swords were still made from bloomery
iron and steel. The Japanese sword manufacturing business never switched to blast furnaces and steel fined from
cast iron. If that makes the swords better is open to doubt. That this makes the swords a hell of lot more expensive
is a fact.

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1)
The text of the Metropolitan to the ken (slightly shortened):
This ken was discovered in one of Japans most famous early burial mounds, known as the Eda Funayama Kofun (burial
mound), located in Kumamoto Prefecture, on Kyushi Island, in southern Japan. The mound, which was excavated first in
1873. Swords of this period are extremely rare and show the earliest stage in the development of Japanese sword blades.
The ken, a sword with a straight double-edged blade based on Chinese prototypes, was used in Japan from at least the
third century until the sixth century. At the end of that period, the double-edged sword was gradually superceded by the
single-edged type, from which all later Japanese swords developed.
1)
There is only one text for one of the swords. As far as I can make out, it is the one in the middle:
Sword with Scabbard Mounts. Date: ca. 600. Culture: Chinese. Medium: Iron, gilt bronze, silver, wood.
This sword is said to have been found in an imperial tomb at Mang Shan, north of Luoyang, Henan Province. The P-
shaped scabbard mounts, probably derived from long swords worn by nomadic Sarmatian and Sasanian horsemen,
served as a prototype for the Japanese tachi (slung sword). The ring pommel takes the form of two confronted dragons.
The rest only caries descriptions like:
Sword with Scabbard Mounts. Date: 6th century. Culture: Japanese. Medium: Iron, gilt bronze, gilt copper, silver.

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